Algerian production, but after a promising start to the 1990s, Algerian cinema declined rapidly in the face of the country’s internal political turmoil and the rise of Islamist movements. Still further reorganization followed in October 1993, and the ensuing social and industrial confusion and chaos became refracted across a number of films, including Touchia (Mohamed Rachid Benhadj, 1993), The Honor of the Tribe (Mahmoud Zemmouri, 1993), Youssef: The Legend of the Seventh Sleeper (Mohamed Chouikh, 1993), and Bab el-Oued City (Allouache, 1994).
These circumstances also forced a number of filmmakers into exile or silence. Funding was sought increasingly from Europe, particularly France, and exhibition was limited primarily to film festivals and European art houses. Cinema audiences declined from nine million in 1980 to half a million in 1992, and the 458 cinemas existing to serve a colonial audience at the time of independence was reduced to 15 by 1999. After 1995, film production in Algeria had been reduced to one or two films per year, most of them French coproductions that retreat from urban settings and evidence a shift from realistic narratives to fables and allegories. In The Desert Ark (Chouikh, 1997), for example, interethnic struggles within a remote desert community tinged with a mysticism that nonetheless resists orientalism serve to metaphorize contemporary Algeria. Some filmmakers turned to the Atlas Mountains, and the first three films in Kabyle, the Algerian Berber language, were released between 1995 and 1997. When CAAIC was shut down in 1998, however, numerous filmmakers were left with incomplete films, and by the end of the decade, most of the country’s major directors had chosen to live abroad, as Algerian cinema became largely exilic. The requirements of filming in exile and depending on European financing necessitated the emergence of an Algerian cinema designated as such by the nationality of its filmmakers rather than by shooting locations, and by its treatment of subjects specific to the Algerian experience, including immigration, women’s struggles, and internal conflicts. Allouache made two films in France, where Zemmouri also directed his musical comedy 100% Arabica (1997), while Benhadj shot Mirka (1999) in Italy.
Films made after the turn of the 21st century have been few in number and have continued to emphasize similar themes. Several have examined the challenges facing Algerian women, including Rachida (Yamina Bachir-Chouikh, 2002), The Beacon (Belkacem Hadjaj, 2004), and Enough! (Djamila Sahraoui, 2006). Unsurprisingly, the subject of emigration and return has also been prominent, not least in the work of beur filmmakers Mehdi Charef (Daughter of Keltoum [2001]) and Rabah Ameur-Zaïmèche (Wesh Wesh, What’s Happening? [2001]). Meanwhile, Algerian exiles and beur directors have continued to focus on the Algerian immigrant community in France, as in Salut Cousin! (Allouache, 1996) and Neighbors (Malik Chibane, 2005). In addition, Days of Glory (Rachid Bouchareb, 2006), an exposé of the poor treatment and lack of recognition given to Algerian (and, more broadly, North African) soldiers serving in World War II, brought some of the actions and effects of colonialism to a wider audience. Bouchareb then directed Outside the Law (2010), which revisits the history of the Algerian war of liberation in France, culminating in the attacks on Algerian demonstrators in 1961, earlier depicted in Bourlem Guerdjou’s Living in Paradise (1998).
Contemporary Algerian cinema is supported by the state in a complex manner via a funding body, the National Fund for the Development of Arts, Techniques, and the Film Industry (FDATIC), and an institution that enables coproductions, currently the Algerian Center for the Development of Cinema. Still, the way in which film funding is attributed remains opaque. Major regional or international events such as L’année de l’Algérie / Algeria for a Year in France in 2003; Algiers, Capital City for Arab Culture in 2008; the Panafrican Film Festival in Algiers in 2009; and Constantine, Capital City for Arab Culture in 2015 were enabled by funds that contributed to the production of feature films and shorts, but these were often attached to films with specific themes. Twenty-first-century Algerian cinema has been characterized by didactic biopics about heroes of the war of liberation, such as Mostefa Ben Boulaid (2008) and Krim Belkacem (2016), both directed by Ahmed Rachedi; Zabana! (Ould Khelifa, 2012); and Larbi Ben M’Hidi (Bachir Derrais, 2018), a film originally censored due to controversial scenes about the tensions among the leaders of the revolution. Such films have been funded by the FDATIC as well as the Ministry of the Mujahidin and have been said to cost as much as five or six million euros each—although reliable figures about budgets are not readily available. The FDATIC also finances auteur films whose overall budgets are much more modest.
While Algerian cinema is still very much focused on its troubled history in the 20th century, a new generation of filmmakers has emerged who have opened up new ways of thinking about film form, notably in the works of Tariq Teguia and Karim Moussaoui, but also in the short film Le jardin d’essai (Dania Reymond, 2016), shot in the titular tropical garden in Algiers, where a company is depicted rehearsing scenes for a new film taking place in that besieged city, when reality progressively takes over the fiction, and in Kindil El Bahr (Damien Ounouri, 2016), in which a postcardlike, starkly lit family outing becomes a nightmare when the mother wanders off alone, swimming away from the beach, and turns into a sea monster that avenges the violence she has suffered. Other films have challenged the status quo more directly, recounting the struggles of the majority of the population who have few means to improve their lives. Notable in this regard are A Roundabout in My Head (Hass Ferhani, 2015), a documentary shot in a slaughterhouse serving as both a metaphor and a striking visual evocation of violence, where workers express their disillusionment; Abou Leïla (Amin Sidi-Boumédiène, 2019), an experimental film comprised of a succession of violent scenes that contradict or delegitimize previous ones, about two old friends who journey to the south of the country; and The Blessed (Sofia Djema, 2017), in which a middle-aged couple wanders across the city, meeting friends, being checked by police, and coming to the rescue of their son as they reminisce about the political ideals that have oriented their lives and search for a place to celebrate their wedding anniversary. The Blessed is a relatively uncommon example of an Algerian film whose maker sought funding outside the country, whether in order to secure funds more quickly and reliably or to lessen the risk of censorship.
ALGHANEM, NUJOOM (1962–)
Educated at Ohio University in the United States and Griffith University in Australia, Nujoom Alghanem has arguably become the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) most accomplished filmmaker. Her documentaries examine a variety of subjects with critical perspectives on cultural heritage, usually in the form of biography. Between Two Banks (1999) considers the life of the last man to row the human-powered ferry across the Dubai creek; Al-Mureed (2008) portrays a leading Emirati Sufi sheikh, Shaikh Abdul Raheem Al-Mureed; Hamama (2010) portrays a traditional healer, Hamma from Sharjah; Amal (2010) portrays Syrian actress Amal Hawijeh, who chose to relocate to Dubai; Red Yellow Blue (2013) portrays one the foremost (female) Emirati artists, Najat Makki; Nearby Sky (2014) portrays Fatima Ali Alhameli, the first Emirati woman to enter camels into auctions and beauty pageants; Sounds of the Sea (2014) depicts the male homosocial world of heritage and sea songs in the northern Emirates; Honey, Rain, and Dust (2016) follows three female beekeepers in the UAE who ponder their future in view of global climate disruption; and Sharp Tools (2017) portrays the late (male) Emirati artist Hassan Sharif, considered the founder of modern Emirati art. Alghanem has also made several short narrative films, including The Park (1997) and Salma’s Dinner (2012), and has published collections of poetry in collaboration with her husband, Khalid Albudoor.
AL-GHOUSSAINI, SAMIR (1948–2003)
Born in Baakline, a village in Mount Lebanon, filmmaker Samir Al-Ghoussaini started his career as a script boy and assistant director for filmmaker Tayssir Abboud. His first feature, The Cats of Hamra Street (1972), is an eccentric yet moralizing comedy inspired by the U.S. counterculture, with dialogue in
